


Between Shadow and Soul

by vinnie2757



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Explicit Language, F/M, One Word Prompts, potential sauciness but not much, pre-game
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:35:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 14,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26109544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vinnie2757/pseuds/vinnie2757
Summary: 100 moments from the first time they saw each other to the last.[100 Prompts, 100 fics. Imported from Tumblr.]
Relationships: Cid Highwind/Shera
Kudos: 9





	1. 86. Seeing Red

**Author's Note:**

> Because these are prompts, they're mostly warm-up/cool-down fics, so they're not long, and not polished. (Says she like she proofreads anything she posts.) They're also not in order!
> 
> Prompts can be found here: https://vinnie2757.tumblr.com/post/624832610038874112/send-me-a-number-and-two-characters-get-a
> 
> Title from Neruda.
> 
> Enjoy, my lovelies!

It isn’t that Cid is a jealous man. He’s an only child, raised for the most part with no father, and his mother doing her best when she herself was not quite ready to be responsible for another living being. No, no, this is unfair to her. Catherine had done her best, and her best had been plenty good enough, but she had been a fool to marry his father, and she had endured a lot by his hand, and his mouth, and the foolishness drummed into his head by a century or more of Highwind breeding. As a child, Cid had wanted for nothing, and had cared little for the things, material or otherwise, of others. Love of a father? No need to be jealous of that when he bore the scars of his father’s cane on the back of his thighs. Friends? Siblings? As if he could bring himself to care about that! He had the run of the house, and his mother’s love and support, and then he had the planes, and the respect of everyone not otherwise occupied with hating the air force, and then! Then he had the rockets!

So no, he isn’t a jealous man. He had all he needed as a child, and then as an adult, he had found his way, his path, his little niche corner with those he cared about.

So why, why, fucking _why_ , does it boil his blood like his heart is the hottest kettle to see Shera laughing at Isak’s jokes? Why does it make his knuckles ache to see her touch his hand when he brings her fresh tea? Why does his stomach churn when she brushes her hair from her eyes and looks at her toes and blushes and smiles and just – just – why the fuck should he be jealous that she’s looking at another man that way? It’s not like he wants her fucking attention anyway! Women are – and Shera _especially_! – are silly, and prone to emotion, and full of – of – they have all these notions, and these thoughts, and these _feelings_ , and fucking _hell_ , he just wants to be left alone and not nagged about his diet, or his smoking, or the new bruises on his knuckles and under his eyes from the sleep he’s losing tossing and turning thinking about Shera running off with the fucking moron!

Because he is! Isak is a fucking moron! He’s a pretty face, and a Upper Midgar accent so he sounds all smart and refined and shit, like he’s a man of breeding when the calluses on his palms tell you exactly what kind of kid he is! Couldn’t get his grades in the Academy so he flunked out and worked manual labour until somehow he found himself competent enough to be passed along the chain of command into the Space Program, and now he’s _here_ , making moves on Shera like he has _any right_!

Shera still sits opposite Cid at dinner, but Isak sits to her left most nights, and because Shera uses her fork in her right hand, it means that there is free space between them. He’s always got some quip to draw her attention, to make her look at him, all bright eyes and pleasant smile, and it reaches her eyes, and Cid can see, sitting across from her, that it reaches her eyes. She’s genuinely _happy_ with the attentions this little fucker is paying her!

It’s enough to make him sick.

He has no right to be jealous, no reason to! There’s no need for him to care what Shera does; as long as she comes to the rocket every day and does her job, her – her – _private life_ is her business! He doesn’t care! He doesn’t!

‘Cid?’ Reine asks, and he flinches, which just makes her eyebrows climb higher on her forehead.

Cid Highwind does _not_ flinch. She’s managed to sneak up behind him and get a tickle to his ribs in, managed to catch him asleep, managed to leap out at him from behind corners and doors, and the man just sighs, like she’s a huge disappointment. But flinch? She’s never seen it happen, and that he flinches now is almost a cause for concern.

‘Are you alright?’ she asks, and her knuckles come to rest on his forehead, checking his skin for any trace of a fever.

With a sharper gesture than he means, he swats her hand away, and scowls at her, shoves his chair away from the table to get up.

‘I’m fine,’ he barks, and she gives him an incredulous look, laced through with a small but stout measure of disgust, because his attitude stinks, and he knows it.

Softer, he says, ‘I just need some air.’

He can feel Shera’s eyes on his back, but she doesn’t leave the table, Isak’s voice, all honey-smooth and ocean-deep, wafting after him.

For several minutes, he stands under the eaves, staring at the shadow of the sign swinging in the breeze. Back and forth, back and forth. His foot taps on the boards of the porch and he smokes through his first cigarette in only a few drags, stamping it out before lighting another. The banter inside continues, laughter and exclamations and oohs and ahhs and he’s – he feels – he could just go to bed. Nobody would fucking notice.

The door clicks and footsteps, quiet, soft. Reine, because of course it’s Reine.

‘You’re not alright.’

He curls his lip, jaw jutting, and he stares at his cigarette.

‘No,’ he agrees eventually.

She waits him out, because Reine always waits him out.

‘I just,’ he bursts out, hands flapping and then fists clenching in the air, shaking as he forces himself to take a deep breath, fingers splaying as he lowers his hands, as if trying to bat down the ocean.

An apt metaphor, he’d think, if he were prone to any sort of sensible, educated thought, for his mother had done away with any attempt at giving him an understanding of literature and poetic devices as soon as it became clear he would have the handwriting of a fool for the rest of his life. No love letters would be penned by his hand, that was sure. Fucking fine by him!

‘You just?’ Reine echoes, when he doesn’t continue.

He licks his lips, takes a drag of his cigarette. On the exhale, he says, ‘whenever I see him, I see red. I just – I just want to smash his fucking teeth out.’

Reine gawks at him for a moment, mouth open and eyebrows knotted, and then she laughs once, little more than a wheeze of breath.

‘Cid, I – you.’ She stops trying to make a sentence, presses a fingertip hard to her lips, and breathes hard through her nose.

‘Don’t even fucking _breathe_ it,’ he grunts, and she hums.

‘I wasn’t going to say it,’ she says, and the innocent expression on her face makes him want to backflip off a cliff. ‘I was just going to say that you maybe need to – you know – speak to her.’

He scrubs his face with his free hand, and exhales hard.

‘No,’ he says, ‘no, that is not what I need to do, and you can fuck right off.’

She stays, gaze level, challenging without being confrontational, and he licks his lips again, wants desperately to – to – go back in there and smash Isak’s teeth out, to be brutally fucking honest! But instead, he draws another breath, throws his half-smoked cigarette onto the path, and throws his hands in the air.

‘Fuck it!’ he exclaims. ‘Fuck it! I’m going to bed!’

Reine watches him stomp down the path, and then calls after him.

‘I’ll tell her if you don’t!’

He’s not moving fast enough to skid to a halt, but his entire body locks, and she can see the tightness in his shoulders from here.

‘Fuck off, Reine!’ he shouts back to her, like the spoilt teenager he’d been, arguing with his mother in the middle of the snow, demanding the freedom to be his own man, when he was barely able to dress himself, never mind decide his fate. ‘You don’t know what to tell her!’

‘I know to tell her you love her!’ she calls, smug as a cat, and the curse that comes barrelling out of his chest is not the nicest one he could have used.

‘Just fuck off!’ he yells, and carries on his stomping, because he knows she won’t tell Shera jack shit, same as he won’t tell Shera jack shit.

He’ll just. Sit there seething and seeing red every time Isak’s in his line of sight, and that’ll be that.

He’ll grow up eventually.


	2. 17. Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cid injures himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for blood and injury.

She hears the curse first, and then someone yells and footsteps clang on the iron of the scaffolding, and one of the mechanics goes bolting down the stairs, hand over his mouth, pausing halfway down to empty his lunch over the side of the stairs.

‘Coward!’ the Captain yells.

Shera wrinkles her nose, wipes the end of her nose with her forearm and stains the former with the grease on the latter. Downing her tools, she picks her way around the scaffolding to the other side of the rocket, having to physically move a couple of mechanics out of the way.

She hears John say, ‘put it in the air, above your heart, before you pass out.’

To which the Captain replies, ‘fuck off, it’s not that bad.’

It is that bad, Shera thinks to herself, because the Captain, in typical Captain fashion, has managed to nearly de-hand himself. Quite what he did to manage it, she doesn’t know, but the gash across the back of his hand is showing bone and blood is pulsing and she supposes, from the looks that she’s getting as she gawks at it, that she should be horrified and feel queasy and want to rush down the stairs and swoon and all sorts of other nonsense.

But Shera grew up in her dad’s clinic, where old men broke their hips and young girls fled to beg a pill to help them deal with circumstances they had not wished to be in to have the consequence, and blood is something that comes with all of that. So she stands there and watches as the Captain obligingly thrusts his arm in the air, blood dribbling down his arm and his fingers limp, and wonders at the – the – she can’t think of the word. The way this idiot boy, so quick with his need to get into trouble and injure himself in one way or other, can heal from pretty much anything he gets. A common cold puts him down for a week, but he looks unphased by this latest blood-letter.

‘You know,’ she says, and marvels at the way his gaze snaps to her, only to realise as she meets it, that he’s going cross-eyed, ‘I’m amazed you haven’t _actually_ taken one of your limbs off yet. This has to be the best attempt yet.’

He blinks at her, slowly, and she barely manages to warn John, wrapping a bandage as tight as he can around the cut, before the Captain topples.

Thankfully, John’s legs are in the way to stop him going over, and he’s holding the Captain’s arm, which mostly keeps him upright. Shera moves to his other side to pull his weight up off the innkeeper’s shins, and the smell of iron is almost too strong.

‘He’s really done himself a mischief this time,’ John says, and finishes tying off the bandage. ‘Shera, do you think you could clear the way back to the inn? Reine needs to look at this one.’

She nods, and obligingly shoves all of the other mechanics around to the other side of the rocket, telling them to get on with their work, and would someone please use the pump washer to hose down all the blood, we don’t need another Valron coming in. Then, she scurries after John, the Captain strung over his shoulders like a sack of potatoes, plodding down the stairs. He’s careful enough to keep the Captain’s hand elevated, but as soon as they’re on flat ground, Shera takes it in hers and holds it as high as she can while keeping pace with John.

‘Reine!’ John calls, as they duck into the Inn.

She appears from the back room, wiping her hands, and she just takes one deep breath and shakes her head.

‘Put him in my room,’ Shera says, ‘I don’t mind, and my sheets need changing anyway, I – uh. I spilled ink on them, sorry.’

Reine snorts, and shakes her head again, gestures for them to head up.

‘I’ll get the first aid kit, how bad is it?’

‘Damn near severed his hand,’ John says, ‘he’s lucky he got distracted, else he would have.’

Shera rushes up the stairs, and titters, a little. ‘Being distracted is probably what caused him to do it in the first place, though.’

John eyes her for a moment, and it’s so heavy a gaze, so full of a meaning she daren’t try to find, that she feels herself blush.

‘Shera,’ he says, but she just shakes herself down, and opens the door to her room.

‘Sorry for the mess,’ she says, and tosses some clothes on the chair, yanking the covers of the bed straight so John can lay the Captain down.

It’s – uh – it’s not quite how Shera intended to first see the Captain in her bed, pale with blood loss and a little bit sweaty at the edges, but he stirs as he’s settled on the mattress, and blinks at her.

‘Fuck,’ he says, and Shera smiles at him, sure she’s a blurry, swimming impossibility on the edges of a vision he doesn’t quite have.

She takes his good hand between both of hers, and watches his face.

‘Reine’s going to fix you up,’ she says, ‘before you get yourself into more trouble. Honestly, Captain, don’t you ever learn?’

He turns his head, raises his injured hand and stares at it, the bandage already soaked through with blood and his arm stained red.

‘Shera,’ he says, and turns his head back to her. She squeezes his hand. ‘’S your fault.’

She smiles at him, because she knows it is; it usually is.

Reine saves her from replying by appearing with the first aid kit, full of antiseptics and bandages and potions. They need to invest in better ones, really, if the Captain’s going to insist on this kind of nonsense. They keep talking about buying a Restore materia, but they all know, deep down, that they’ll do nothing of the sort

She works quietly, tutting and tsking about the state of the Captain’s hand. Shera rubs her thumb over the knuckles of the hand she’s holding, and watches Reine work. The Captain is still pale, and he looks woozy, but that’s to be expected, she supposes. She wonders how it is that he gets himself into these scrapes all the time and yet still gets so weakened by them. Surely, given their regularity, he should be able to withstand it all a bit more strongly. More resilient, maybe. She doesn’t know the word she wants. But she’d have thought a man used to his blood being on the wrong side of his body – being outside, instead of inside – would be able to withstand it fairly easily, and just get on with his day.

But no, every single time, though emotionally unbothered by the sight of his blood and bone, he hits the ground and can’t get up for a minimum of a whole entire day.

She flushes dark, from her ears to her collar. He certainly can’t stay in her bed. It wouldn’t be the first time she had slept with him – there had been that time with the hypothermia, after all – but this is _her_ bed. It’s different. Not that she doesn’t _want_ to! But it’s – she’s sure he’ll be fit enough to go back to his cabin soon enough, and he’ll be able to look after himself after a decent meal and a cup of tea. He’ll just be woozy and sleep a great deal and he’ll rattle about the cabin for the day before he’s right as rain.

Doesn’t need to be in her bed for that, not at all.

‘There you are,’ Reine says, after Shera’s felt her face burn for entirely too long, the Captain watching it with the fascination of a boy watching ants carry away breadcrumbs. ‘You’ll scar, but what else is new?’

The Captain looks at his hand, covered in a new bandage, behind which potion has been slathered over a series of neat little stitches.

‘Thanks,’ he says, and looks at Shera again. ‘Sorry for bleeding on your sheets.’

She shakes her head, resists the urge to touch his face, covered in blood spots as it is.

‘The sheets needed changing.’

He lies there for a moment, and then his grip on Shera’s hand changes, and she braces her arm to let him get himself upright. He finally extricates his hand and rubs his face with it.

‘I’d better get back to work,’ he says, still pale and sweaty at the edges.

‘Nonsense,’ Reine says, ‘you’ll stay where I can see you until dinner, and then you’ll go home and you’ll take some more painkillers and you’ll go to sleep. The potion will work its magic overnight, and you’ll maybe be fit enough to go back to work tomorrow, but not today, Captain, not a chance.’

‘Reine,’ he says, but she plants her hands on her hips, and Cid isn’t yet twenty-five, he doesn’t stand a chance.

‘I’ll stay with you,’ Shera offers, ‘I wanted to discuss the blueprint with you anyway.’

He doesn’t much look like it’s a comfort, but he accepts it anyway, and Shera promises to meet him downstairs in the comfy chairs in the lobby, just as soon as she’s stripped the sheets and put them on to wash and made a cup of tea.


	3. 74. Are You Challenging Me?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's hot, but Livas isn't above a challenge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I miss the summer already.

It’s the height of summer, and naturally, everybody loses their minds. Being on the plains as they are, they get the breeze off the coast, when it reaches them, but they have no trees, or mountains, or lakes, or anything really, to protect them, so they have the sun from the moment it breaches the horizon to the moment it disappears on the other side. They’re hot and sweaty, cotton sticking to their skin like an extra layer of cells before ten, and by lunchtime, they’ve done Reine out of all the lemons she’s been able to get to make fresh lemonade with.

‘Right!’ Livas exclaims, and Shera scrapes her hair off her temples, blinks sweat from her eyes as she looks up at him.

They all look exhausted, wiped out by the heat. The Captain comes and sits next to her, legs akimbo, flat on his back with an arm over his eyes. Shera herself is on a rug, a bunch of wires and cables and chocolate box connectors between her spread legs, and she’s done nothing at all with them for a good hour, just staring at them in heat-exhausted aplomb.

‘Right?’ the Captain grunts, and Shera wants to pat him, but all she can reach is his bare stomach, and she can see the sweat on him from here.

‘Right,’ Livas repeats. ‘It’s too fuckin’ hot. I am calling rank as second-in-command, and I am saying that we fuck off building today, and tomorrow we go to the cove.’

‘Cove?’ Shera asks, and the Captain grunts again.

Around them, the others are murmuring in agreement, and downing tools, because the Captain hasn’t immediately said no, and that’s as good as an agreement to them.

‘Yeah,’ the Captain says, and he blinks at her from under his arm. His eyes are very, very blue, and she watches them dancing in the shadow of his elbow for a moment. ‘Bit northwest of here, a few hours drive, there’s a cover, three beaches, never any people, because Crown Lances like it up there during breeding season, which it ain’t, and people ain’t learnt that, and we’re not going to be the ones to fuckin’ announce it. They’re already swarming the beach to the south, surprised there ain’t big business there yet. Either way, it’s quiet, and it’s got water, and sand, and we’ll leave at dawn, so we can make the most of it.’

Shera looks back at the chocolate boxes and the wires, and the wire-strippers stained with the sweat off her palm.

‘I was going to finish the wiring for the control panel.’

The Captain laughs. ‘It can wait,’ he assures her, ‘it ain’t a race.’

That tells her how hot it is, she supposes, as he obligingly fetches her toolbox, halfway up the rocket, and tosses the electrical tape at her so she can secure everything, ready for a break in the heat so she can work on it properly. If the Captain is calling it, saying enough is enough, then it really is enough, and she can rest easy.

Well.

Sort of. It’s too hot to sleep, even with the windows open, and the curtains soaked in the bath, and no clothes and no sheets and a wet flannel on her face. She’s – she’s not irritable in the morning, because Shera does not _get_ irritable. But she’s exhausted, and when she comes down at the first hint of light through her curtains, John and Reine are already up and ready, bustling about with coolboxes and bags and that look of stress they get when they have to do the thinking for grown adults.

‘Can I help?’ Shera asks, and John shoves a bowl of cereal at her.

‘Eat this,’ he says, and points at the counter stool, ‘sit there, don’t talk to Reine.’

‘That bad?’ she asks.

‘No time to prep, as usual,’ John snorts, and hoists a coolbox onto his shoulder. ‘But we’ve got enough to keep them from being too rowdy.’

Reine comes sweeping through and touches Shera’s cheek, calls her a beautiful girl, which is a thanks for staying in one place and out of the way, then she’s gone again, having obtained the stack of plastic pint glasses that she’d come in for.

‘Oh!’ she says, turning back at the last second, ‘you have swimwear, right?’

Shera nods, ‘I bought it when I was in the Academy, they had a swimming pool, but I – I never used it.’

Not because the water smelled a little bit – _strange_ – but because she saw the kinds of girl that swam in the Academy pool, and Shera didn’t belong there.

‘Okay,’ Reine nods, and leaves.

Shera finishes her cereal, washes her bowl, and stares for a solid minute at the kettle, trying to decide if it was worth it. Sense wins out, and she drinks a glass of water.

Another half hour and she’s strapping her feet into her boots, which Reine raises her eyebrows at, but Shera only really owns boots now, other than a nice pair of shoes, and she can take them off as soon as they get to their destination.

Most of the town are milling about, but one figure is conspicuously absent.

‘For pity’s – Shera, go and get the Captain out of bed, please.’

Shera, who had been very obviously sneaking grapes from one of the coolboxes, widens her eyes as innocently as possible.

‘Why me?’ she asks.

‘He won’t throw a shoe at you,’ Livas offers, and he looks very hungover.

It’s too hot to drink, Shera thinks, but that’s never stopped any of them before, and no doubt the Captain will be crabby.

Rolling her eyes, she shoves the last of the grapes into her mouth and pads across the square to the Captain’s cabin, rapping politely at the door. There’s no answer, even though she waits, and there’s generally an open-door policy, so she just lets herself in. He’s got the curtains closed, and the windows open, and there’s the subtle staleness to the air from him having wet his curtains too, same as they all have. But there’s no sign of him having woken yet, no wet towel on the bathroom door, no dishes in the sink, and the cigarette packet is still closed on the table. This is the most telling sign, Shera has found, because he will leave it open when he’s awake, but when he goes to bed, he makes sure to close it. Quite what difference it makes, given that the paper packet is not air tight, Shera doesn’t know, and she rather thinks that cigarettes aren’t going to go stale the way that biscuits might, but she appreciates that he’s a creature of habit, because it means he’s not awake.

‘Captain?’ she asks, but she gets no reply, so she runs her fingers across the table, making her way to the bedroom, listening at the door.

Hearing only breathing, she cracks it open, just a little, and pokes her head through.

It’s not quite breath-taking, but it makes her heart skip a beat, makes her pause on an inhale to just look at him. Sprawled prone on his bed, sheets tangled around his legs, his brow relaxed in sleep, mouth open, he’s beautiful. Peaceful. His skin is evenly tanned, except for a very distinctly paler patch at his waist, where his ass has been covered by fabric, and the muscles are picked out in the faint light coming through the cabin now she’s open the door.

‘Captain?’ she asks, quietly, and he stirs, just a little, a hand lifting from where it overhangs the bed and waving at her.

‘I’m up,’ he grunts, and then leaps upright as it registers that he’s responding a voice. ‘Fuck sake, Shera! Fuck off! Fucking hell! Get out, fuck me! Fucking knock!’

She tries, honestly, to not give him a once-over, because it’s not like she hasn’t seen him without a shirt on before, and even he’s admitted shorts are more comfortable in the heat, but she can’t help herself. He’s all lean muscle, and wild-eyed, and she ducks out of the room, shutting the door behind her.

‘We’re almost ready to go, Captain! We’re waiting on you!’

‘Fucking hell!’ he yells back, ‘fuck off, I’ll be out in ten minutes!’

It’s closer to twenty, but nobody’s going to argue with him over it, because they’re too busy arguing with the monstrosity of a ghettoblaster that Livas has fished out of who-knows-where, and is playing some of the most obnoxious hits he can tune the radio into. It doesn’t matter that they’re chart-toppers in Midgar, they’re obnoxious, and everyone’s yelling good-naturedly about it.

‘Right,’ the Captain yells over the din, ‘come on then, we’ve hung about long enough!’

John looks at Shera, because she’s next to him, and she raises her eyebrows. Snorting, he jumps down from the back of the truck, going to the cab to get her fired up so they can head on their way.

-0-0-0-

It’s nice, the whole beach thing. Getting to relax away from the heat of the rocket, paddle in the sea, eat snacks and drink lemonade – or beer, in the case of the boys, because of course they went out in the dead of night to buy a case load – and just. Relax. It’s nice.

Shera stretches out on a towel, arm over her eyes, listening to the boys argue over a game of three-in-a-row they’ve drawn in the sand. The Captain is somewhere nearby, grumbling around a cigarette about one of the mechanics swimming out to the islands a little ways off the coast.

‘Going to get himself maimed,’ he’s saying, and Shera hums.

‘It’s shallow enough,’ she says, peeking from under her elbow, ‘I think at low tide, you’d be able to walk across.’

The Captain looks back at her, and promptly flushes, turns his gaze away. She can’t imagine why, it’s not like the swimsuit is particularly revealing, and it’s not like she has many assets to fill it! Still, it’s a nice thought.

‘Hey, Shera?’ Livas asks a while later, when she gets up to fish some lemonade from the cooler.

‘Yes?’

‘Have you ever ridden a chocobo?’

She pauses, and plucks uselessly at the edge of her swimsuit. ‘No,’ she says, shaking her head, ‘we, uh. It wasn’t something I ever thought about when I was younger. And then I was at the Academy, and it wasn’t really – no. I don’t think I’ve ever even really seen one.’

The Captain, who has found a big stick and is on the hunt for a rock sharp enough to shape the end, because that’s just the way he is, looks at her.

‘You’ve never ridden a chocobo?’

She juts a lip, shakes her head. ‘No.’

Livas looks at the Captain. The Captain looks at Livas.

‘No,’ the Captain says.

‘What do you mean no?’ Livas asks, all innocence.

‘I mean, no,’ the Captain tells him, and goes back to looking at the sand for a suitable rock.

‘What does he mean, no?’ Shera asks Livas.

Livas, looking at the Captain from the corner of his eyes, says, ‘he doesn’t want to embarrass himself by being unable to catch a chocobo.’

The Captain stops dead, and after a few minutes, sighs.

‘Are you challenging me?’ he asks.

Livas says nothing, but he looks at Shera and raises his eyebrows.

With a heavy grown, the Captain jabs his stick in the sand and gestures at Shera.

‘Come on, then, four-eyes,’ he says, and Shera puts the lemonade back, trots after him.

Going from sand to grass takes a moment’s adjustment, but she gives her toes a wiggle to get the worst of the sand from between them, and she’s good to go.

‘Where are we going?’ she asks, and that’s probably going to get her into trouble one day, just following after the Captain like a puppy, or a lovestruck girl.

The less said, the better.

‘There’s some tracks a little ways off,’ the Captain says, and she watches him for a moment.

‘Tracks?’ she asks, when she manages to get her eyes off his calves.

If she believed in a god, she might attribute his legs to some divine intervention, but as it is, she knows it’s just good breeding and exercise.

‘Chocobo tracks. There’s some pretty docile ones around here, it shouldn’t be hard to get one.’

‘Get one?’ she asks, and scurries to catch up to him after falling behind a few steps. ‘I thought you needed greens for that.’

The Captain snorts. ‘I grew up in Deist, we had wild chocobo all around the place, I used to just pull them in off the tracks. Mum would go spare. You just need to know what you’re doing, is all.’

‘If you’re sure,’ she says, ‘don’t feel you have to.’

The Captain looks at her, and she blushes.

‘Even if Livas wasn’t challenging me to it, I would. Nobody should go through their life never riding a chocobo.’

‘Couldn’t I just – go to the farm?’ she asks, ‘out by Midgar?’

The Captain huffs. ‘You waste all your opportunities?’

Though it isn’t the opportunity he means, she thinks, she wants to take the opportunity to spend time with him alone, seeing him in just a pair of swimming trunks, loose-limbed and with an easy grin, and she wants to make the most of it.

‘I hope not,’ she says, and he nods.

After maybe twenty minutes walking, he throws an arm out and she nearly walks straight into it.

‘Look,’ he says, pointing, ‘you see the tracks? There’s at least a few around here.’

‘How do we draw them out?’ she asks.

‘We wait,’ he shrugs, and takes a seat on the grass.

She looks at him sat there, and then looks at the tracks, back to where the others are vague shapes on the sand, and then takes a seat next to him.

They don’t really talk, because they don’t really need to. She’s burning for the warmth of him next to her, and he’s content to just sit there, watching the scenery shift in front of them, clouds drifting across the sky and the odd rustle in the grass. Shera’s not sure how much time passes, but she’s wondering if maybe she should say something to him, maybe suggest they give up and go back, when he grabs her arm.

‘There,’ he whispers, and she turns her head from where she’d been looking in entirely the wrong direction.

And there it is, a chocobo, beautiful yellow coat and two metres high, if not more than that. It’s grazing in the grass near the tracks, and for a minute or two, they watch it, completely oblivious to them.

‘It’s beautiful,’ Shera whispers.

‘Have you really never seen one?’ the Captain asks.

Shera shakes her head. ‘Not up close,’ she says, ‘just in the distance, pulling the carriages in Midgar.’

The Captain nods, and shifts onto his haunches, and she can see the shift in the muscles in his legs, as though they’re not really his legs any more. If she had the chance, she thinks she’d like to observe him in motion more thoroughly, on a slow-capture lens, just to see what his muscles really do. But instead, she’s gawking at the way he’s silent on his feet as he creeps through the grass, and between one blink and the next, scrubbing sweat out of her eye, he’s got the chocobo, his feet tucked underneath its wings and a hand in the feathers at the back of its neck, like grabbing a cat by the scruff.

‘Easy,’ he calls, and Shera stands, wary, picks her way across the grass to look at the chocobo closer.

In the end, he can’t convince her to get on for a ride, because Shera is sensible with a capital S, raised to have common sense and a healthy desire to not get injured. He calls her names, but she watches him trot the chocobo around the plain in a circle before letting it go, and he returns to her with an easy grin.

‘I’ll have to take you home,’ he says, ‘back to Deist. I had a gold as a boy, because my father thought it would make me behave. I preferred the black, though I doubt it’s fit to ride now. Maybe Mum bred it, that would be nice. Either way, we have domesticated ones, we even saddle them, when we take them out. You’d ride one of those, wouldn’t you?’

She doesn’t think he’s really thinking about it. He’s suggesting taking her home, introducing her to his home, his mother. She’s blushing, and she knows she is.

‘Perhaps we should head back to the others,’ she says.

He says no more about it, and it’s almost ten years before he does take her back to Deist. The first thing he says to her is that they need to go to the stable so that she can finally get that ride in.


	4. 32. Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One night, Shera can't sleep.

It’s late, and the sky is clear, so of course Shera shrugs into her jacket over the top of her pyjamas, shorts and t-shirt for the residual heat of the summer nights, but cool without the sun, and pads downstairs. The Inn is silent, just the low rumble of snoring at the far end of the hall, and the quiet hum of the lights in the bar, and she leaves the door ajar behind her. The moon hangs low, not quite full, but she can’t remember which way she’s going, whether she missed the full or the old girl’s winding up to it. Either way, it illuminates the paths, and she steps further away from the Inn, out into the square, chin lifted to look up, up, up at the sky, traces the patterns of the stars with her eyes, a fingertip.

From horizon to horizon, clear as day, a shine of light, a cloud of stars, so densely clustered and yet so spread out as to be invisible, shining purple and blue and pink and the most beautiful thing she’s seen. When she stops to look at it, really, genuinely look at it, it’s beautiful, breath-taking, and able to make her feel so big and so small all at once.

They are tiny, in the grand scheme of things, this she knows well enough. But to be part of something bigger, to be part of the space program, to be looking at the stars with a view of being _there_ , it’s bigger than anything else.

But the stars, and thoughts of the infinite majesty of the universe are not what brought her out. No, no, barefoot and with the chill of empty air against her bare legs, she pads across the square to where the Captain sits, cigarette a pinprick of light against the shadow of his porch, that’s what brought her out.

‘Captain?’ she asks, and he flinches, looks up.

‘Oh, Shera. You should be asleep.’

She smiles, and gestures, and he shuffles across on the step to give her room to sit.

‘Too much excitement,’ she says, because they launched a rocket, and it made a successful re-entry, and she thinks that they have a good chance of getting life in there.

The Captain scoffs, and takes a deep drag of his cigarette, and exhales it in a cloud of smoke that almost mirrors the galaxy above them. Almost. There’s probably something poetic in there, but Shera is too exhilarated to be close to him to find the poem.

‘Fucking excitement. Come back to me when you have life up there,’ he says, and stubs the cigarette out under his boot.

‘The next one,’ she says, like she can make that decision. ‘If I can get the oxygen tanks programmed in, I think we can put something in there. Not you. Not yet. But something.’

The Captain shakes his head.

‘Don’t go getting my hopes up,’ he says, jovial enough, and leans back on his elbows.

She huddles forward, uses the lining of her jacket to get some heat trapped around her bare shins.

For a moment, they sit there in silence, staring up at the stars.

‘Why did you come here?’ the Captain asks eventually.

‘I couldn’t sleep,’ she says.

‘No, I mean _here_.’

‘To the site? Palmer offered me the job, and I took it.’

‘That simple, huh?’

She frowns, glances back at him. He’s watching her with an unreadable expression, and it’s not the first time he’s asked her that question. It would be boring, if she didn’t understand why he asked her.

‘That simple,’ she nods. ‘I’ve always had an interest in space, and the chance was too good to pass up. And, of course, I get to work with the _infamous_ Captain Highwind.’

Here, she nudges her leg against his, and the heat coming off him is a furnace. For someone who grew up in the cold of the mountains, the snow and the thin air, and the empty, rattling walls of a house too big for him, he’s certainly warm enough.

He laughs, once, and then sits up again, burning next to her.

‘You’re a weird one, I’ll give you that. But you do a good job.’

She smiles, softly, and stares out into the night.

‘Thanks,’ she breathes, and they fall back into silence.

She can feel, just about, the edge of the heat of his gaze on her, the way he’s watching her profile, searching it for – for – for something. She’s not sure what, but he’s searching for it, and she lets him look, as long as he needs to find it, and hopes the shadows of the porch help hide the blush it brings. His gaze is as hot as his skin, hotter maybe, and she feels weak under it. He could, she thinks, get away with doing a great many things to her that would likely not make her mother very proud, but Shera thinks that it would be worth it, if the magazine had had any truth to it. In the magazine aisle of the supermarket, last time she went, she’d flicked through a few of the women’s magazines, looked at the articles and had seen the amount of advice about – ahem – pleasing another that there had been. She’d been tempted, in that scientifically curious sort of way, the desire to see how the other half live, to pick one up to read, but given the laugh that comes bubbling out of the Captain’s throat, she’s not sure it would have been a good idea.

‘You go places,’ he says, ‘into your head, and I can never work out what the fuck you’re thinking.’

What would he think, she wonders, if he knew? Would he think her strange? Wrong?

Best to say nothing.

Instead, she smiles. ‘I don’t really think anything at all.’

His eyebrow raises, a smile quirking his lips, and then he shakes his head and rifles in his pockets for another cigarette.

They pass much of the rest of the night like that, sitting side by side and staring at the stars and not really saying anything at all. In the morning, after he’s corralled her into going back to the Inn to get something resembling sleep, and then washed and dressed and fed, she dozes off on the scaffolding, leant up against the railing with her cheek pushed against one of the poles, some wires in her lap. She’s adorable, truly, and the Captain pauses on his latest job, carting a bit of this or that across the gangway to be hoisted up the rocket, cigarette between his teeth and pencil behind his ear. She’s beautiful, in her own little way, with her crooked glasses and red cheek and parted lips.

Huffing, because she’s both in the way, in danger of falling, and wasting his and her time both, he puts down his tools and very carefully eases an arm around her back, the other under her knees. Not bashing either of their heads off the railing is a chore, but she only stirs when he hops down the last few stairs, landing a little harder than he intended.

‘Huh? Captain? Wha’sit?’

‘You fell asleep,’ he murmurs, adjusting his grip – for comfort! Not to draw her closer! ‘Should have gotten more sleep, instead of fuckin’ staying up all night.’

‘Am fine,’ she breathes, but her breath is hot and steady against his neck, and her eyes are shut.

‘Sure thing,’ he scoffs, gentle, and ducks into the Inn.

Reine, behind the desk and making notes in the books, looks at him. He eyeballs her back, and she raises her hands innocently. He tries not to spend too long in Shera’s room, settling her down and easing her boots off, and stroking her hair back from her face. He tries his best not to, but he also doesn’t want to face Reine when he goes back downstairs.

His mother didn’t raise a chickenshit though, so he takes one last look at her, sprawled out and down for the count, and closes the door behind him.


	5. 63. Do Not Disturb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gotta learn to lock those doors, kids.

Somehow, even though he’s sure he expressed an incredibly deep dislike of the idea, she ends up moving in. He has to build a staircase out the back, and put in a door and windows in the attic space, and build and decorate two rooms for them. He doesn’t quite remember how it came out, except that it did. She owes him, he reasons, for ruining his life, and so having her on hand to do all the things he hates doing – cooking, and cleaning, and making the best cup of tea he’s ever drank in his life, and the only one he can bear to drink any more – that just makes sense. Sure, it puts the bills on the place up, but her wage covers it, and the Institute pays better than Palmer ever did, so it’s not like they’re _hurting._ Sure, it’s tight in the summer, when the kids aren’t around to bully, but they make do.

He doesn’t bother building a second bathroom, figures they can probably manage to work their routines out to avoid each other. And for the most part, they do, because she’s like clockwork, and he could time her, day by day, and have half a minute between the various parts of her routine. It’s easy enough to fit around her – brush his teeth while she’s getting dressed, put the kettle on while she’s washing her face, shave while she’s making breakfast, that sort of thing. It’s almost _familiar_ , by the end of the first six months of her being there. It just works, it makes sense. It’s, dare he say it, _nice_.

The only real stickler is that she likes, once a week, to have a bath instead of a strip-wash or a shower. This, well, truth be told to the silence of his bedroom at two in the morning when he can’t sleep for the ache in his chest, this is fine by him. To be honest, it’s a small price to pay for her happiness. He’s only rarely inconvenienced by her being in the bathroom, and it’s not like he can’t just go and piss behind the _Bronco_ , if it comes to that.

But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t think with the wrong brain at times and just walk into the bathroom when he knows full well that she’s in the bath. Usually, it’s if he’s been away for the day, training or checking up on the rocket, or just annoying John and Reine at the Inn like he’s still twenty-four and full of himself, buoyed by the attention Shera had given him, and the arrogance of having his dream still firmly under his feet. He’s not that man now, but sometimes there are moments where he gets that lift in his wings.

‘Captain!’ she exclaims, and splashes water and bubbles in an effort to cover herself.

He’s gotten, over the years, very good at taking her in without being obvious about it. At first, it was easy, because she was in t-shirts and shorts and had more skin on display than should have been legal, and it had been easy to take her in. Then he’d gotten good at being subtle about it, once Reine had verbally slapped his wrist for teasing the poor girl. Her blushes had _fascinated_ him, the way she’d stutter and look elsewhere, the way he knew her heart was beating, and sometimes she’d cross her legs, and later, alone with his thoughts, he’d think about taking her knees, always bruised and scraped, but slender, lady-like in a way he didn’t think to look for a woman, and pull them apart, find out just what she was hiding by doing it. He’d think about what was under her shorts, the warmth he’s sure she has, the hot and wet and _shit_ , he wants to know every inch of her.

So, he’s good at looking without being obvious, and he takes in the curve of her legs, the way she hides her breasts but the bubbles shift around her and he can see the curve of her waist, just about. The damp curl of her hair, in a bun instead of a ponytail, the high flush from the steam, the brightness of her eyes, not hidden behind her glasses, because who wears glasses in the bath? He holds up a hand, doesn’t cover his eyes with it, but uses it to apologise, and he backs out of the bathroom, shutting the door, and he listens to the splash of water, the heavy sigh as she settles again. He wonders, as he clomps upstairs to throw himself on his bed and stare at the ceiling, whether she thinks about him. She’s never walked in when he’s in the shower, though that’s a little harder to justify; in the bath, he has the excuse of having forgotten she was in there.

It hasn’t escaped him, as he listens to her pad up the stairs, shut her door, that it’s probably unhealthy to have been – he’s not _obsessed_ – but he thinks about her a lot. Considering he’s never, and likely will never, make any kind of move on her, it’s probably unhealthy to put his hand on his cock to the thought of her, but he supposes that he’s a man with many faults, and the curve of her ass is her main fault. If he’s weak for it, even with how much he fucking _hates_ where she’s put him in life, that’s just something he has to accept.

The first few times he walks in on her in the bath, it’s actually almost a hundred percent accidental. He’d known she was in there, but his brain had conveniently forgotten that information, because she’d been quiet, reading a book or examining her nails or even halfway toward drifting off, which, when the door creaked, had caused her to bolt upright, and okay, sure, getting to see her tits, soaking wet and edged in bubbles, that had probably been the highlight of his day, to be fucking honest. It certainly made his _evening_.

The fourth time, late in the winter when he’d come stomping in and knocking snow off his boots, tossing his jacket on the chair, he hadn’t _thought_ about it, because she’d said she was going to have a bath, and he’d nodded, acknowledged it, but it had been a long day full of crying young adults and a damaged air conditioner, and he’d just. Forgotten completely. So he swings into the bathroom, and gets both feet over the threshold before realising she’s in there, and he’s got the sleeves of his sweater up to his elbows so he can wash the grease off his hands, because why would he wear gloves in _winter_ , that’s _ridiculous_ , and he – he pauses. She slips down to her chin, and she’s put twice as many bubbles in this time, so all he can see is her head and an inch of neck, her fingertips, clutching a book, one knee, the other lower leg, shapely and wet, toes up against the taps.

Shit, he thinks, and stares at her. She stares back.

‘Captain,’ she says, quiet.

He’s overcome with the urge to just shed all of his clothes and get in the tub with her, even though there’s _no_ space for them both. There’s barely room for her, and she’s shorter than he is. Her eyes are so bright, her lips flush pink, parted slightly.

‘Can I help?’ she asks next, when he doesn’t do much more than blink.

‘No,’ he replies, slow, and he shakes his head. ‘I forgot you said you were having a bath. I’ll use the kitchen sink.’

She chews her lip for a second, opens her mouth to speak, but by then he’s already backed out of the bathroom, shut the door – though not without a last glimpse of her ankle. Part of him thinks – hopes – that she would have offered the bathroom sink, that it was okay for him to be in there. But that, he thinks, is a hope too far, because she has no reason to want him in her space, when she’d been so sure of its guaranteed privacy.

He endeavours, for the rest of the winter, to listen at the bathroom door before walking in. The bottle of bubbles changes fairly regularly, so he’s sure she’s putting enough in to hide herself, just in case.

Though, he does wonder, lying awake late at night and listening to visitors to the town, tourists come to see the fuck-up that is the rocket, drunk as assholes and singing in the square, he does wonder why she doesn’t lock the door. It’s lockable, and he locks it, out of habit, so he wonders why she doesn’t. Does she _want_ him to come in? To see her?

He’s never been entirely sure if she _likes_ him. Eight years, and he gets hints that she wants to jump his bones, and then hints that she wouldn’t care if he died, and he’s not sure which is truer. If he gave himself the space to be honest with himself, he’d admit, properly, that he’s in love with her, has been pretty much since he met her and she nearly broke the bolt hitting it with a wrench. 

‘We need a sign,’ he says in the morning, when he comes down to find her in her pyjamas still, but with the pulled-up hair of someone who’s washed their face.

Palmer’s obviously sent her some bullshit, because she’s reading it with her fingers on her temple, her nose wrinkled. He doesn’t know why Palmer keeps sending her bullshit, she technically doesn’t work for him anymore either, and more to the point, he doesn’t know why she keeps answering it. It’s not like there’s any space exploration going on.

He flops into the chair opposite her, rests his feet on her chair legs the way he always does, and she goes to put the kettle on.

‘Good morning to you, too,’ she smiles, ‘and what for?’

‘For the bathroom.’ He grabs the packet of cigarettes on the table, pulls one out but doesn’t light it; she’s not a fan of them being lit when she’s sorting breakfast, and that’s fair. After that is fair game, but first thing in the morning is too much.

It’s the little things.

‘You could just knock,’ she says, glances over her shoulder.

He squints at her, tries to make it look threatening, like she couldn’t possibly be _daring_ to tell him that he’s in the wrong. It’s never really worked, but at least he tries. There’s something about her that just nullifies any authority, any threat, any degree of warning he might otherwise possess.

She shrugs, and apologises for the tea taking a while.

‘Oh, fuck off,’ he grunts, and pads outside to smoke.

He’s towards the end of the cigarette when she brings him a cup of tea, one for herself in her other hand. He takes it, hates the prickle of his arm hair when their fingers brush.

‘You apologise too much,’ he tells her, ‘you know that, don’t you?’

She looks out across the grass. ‘I have a lot to apologise for.’

He sighs, and says nothing, just downs his tea, perfectly made as fucking always.


	6. 12. Insanity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cid considers what was, what is, and what will be, and the answer is always the same.

A wiser man than him once said that insanity could, and should, be defined as repeating the same thing over and over and over again and expecting something to change. Lying in his bed and staring at the ceiling and seething with rage, cracking his knuckles and picking flecks of blood out of the creases, he thinks that Shera can be put down as the craziest motherfucker to grace this shithole of a planet.

She cost him _everything_ , all the things he held dear gone up in fucking smoke because of her and her crazy fucking notion that something was wrong. Fucking paranoid delusions, that’s what she’s got. Fucking delusions of grandeur. Fuck sake.

He curls his fingers in one at a time and stretches them out again as far as they can go. He watches the shadows behind them, catching the moonlight and dancing here and there, back and forth as the breeze shifts the tree outside the window.

This is unfair, he supposes. Not all the things he held dear have gone. Very few of them, really, when you actually break down the things he _cares_ about. She’s still alive, for a fucking start. Which is how this whole sorry situation came to be, and he slams a hand on the bedside table, once, twice, three times before he gets a hold of his cigarettes and he lights one with a sharp little snap of his lighter. How he doesn’t snap the button he’s not sure, but the cigarette lights, and he takes a too-long drag that makes him cough.

So she’s still alive, and John and Reine and everyone else in this fucking town. Nobody’s died, or been hurt. Apart from that cunt of a ShinRa engineer, but he had it coming, and Cid would _gladly_ do it again. Fuck that little prick, and fuck the high and mighty bullshit he thinks he can stand on, never mind ride. Let her fucking die, what an absolutely stupid piece of nonsense. Fucking idiot.

Let her die. He’d sooner kill himself than let her come to harm, and ain’t that the fucking problem!

Just the latest in the long line of things he’s done to keep her safe when she’s too fucking stupid to see that she’s in danger. If he’s not aborting the launch of the rocket and destroying his fucking dream, he’s getting glassed and mauled by monsters and there was that one time he told Scarlet to go fuck herself for the rude comment she’d made, which was funding suicide. Shera hadn’t even been in danger then, not really, because what could Scarlet do, except damage her self-esteem? But no, Cid can’t keep his fucking mouth shut, never mind keep his nose out of it.

Who’s the crazy motherfucker now, then? Shera, looking for faults that aren’t there? Or Cid, getting himself maimed in her name and hoping that she’ll fucking look at him for more than two seconds? Who’s the fucking insane one now? Who’s the fucking lunatic, really?

He stubs the cigarette out, half-smoked, on the edge of the table and throws himself to his feet.

Fuck sake, he’ll never sleep another fucking night now. Thank fuck that when he looks out of his bedroom window, he can’t see the fucking rocket. Someone had some common fucking sense there, he looks out over the empty fields and trees in the distance. Fuck sake.

He drums his fingers on the windowsill and stares out across the grass. Fucking Shera, ruining his fucking _life_ for her insane little paranoid worry that something was wrong! Oxygen tank his fucking arse. Fuck knows why she’d make it up, but there couldn’t have been anything wrong with it, he’d fixed it himself after the damage to the tank! It was _fine_!

He digs the heels of his hands into his eyes and grunts.

‘Fucking idiot,’ he says, but he’s not sure who it’s directed at.

A rumble of an engine, and he jumps. For a second, he thinks it’s going to be ShinRa, come to question why he beat the shit out of one of their stooges, but he goes to the front and peers out of the window and it’s only John. Of course it is.

Without bothering with his shoes or a jacket, Cid slips out of the door and crosses the square.

‘John,’ he calls, just loud enough for the barman to hear him.

‘Cid,’ he replies, and turns away from the door, steps away from it, towards Cid.

He’s a towering bloke, six-five at the least, and every bit as wide as that, but he looks small in this light, old. He looks tired, and Cid can’t say he’s surprised; it’s been the better part of twelve hours, and John’s had to sit and wait the entire time.

‘The kid’s alright,’ he says, and Cid looks at his feet, scuffs his bare toes against a pebble. ‘Took them a while, but they’ve got him sorted now. He’ll need another surgery, in a few weeks, when it’s all healed up, but he should come out of it intact. He hasn’t lost an eye, so that’s something.’

Cid feels both relief and guilt and blinding rage sweep through him at the same time, making his stomach churn, and his heart ache.

‘Fucker deserved it,’ he murmurs, a scolded child, petulant and cross.

‘Yes,’ John agrees, ‘but that wasn’t a good enough reason to smash his face in, Cid.’

Cid wants to say that John would have done the same, that he, Cid, would gladly do it again, and he’ll do it until he fucking _dies_ , because Shera is worth that, what Shera had managed to do for them was astronomical – literally! – and that they owed her everything, but this is also all her fault.

John smiles sadly, because he knows. John has known Cid too long now to not know what the younger man is thinking, and he just claps the pilot on the shoulder and tells him to go back to bed.

He’s too angry to sleep though, and he sits at the table stewing over it for another few hours, and then he goes back to bed and frowns to himself about it for another few hours. The sun comes up, and the shadow of the rocket passes his window. He rolls away from it and stares at a knot in the wood on the floor.

‘It’s her fault,’ he tells it, and it says nothing in return.

Deep down, he knows it isn’t her fault. She’d seen something wrong, and he should have listened. But she should have known better than to be in the rocket while it was launching. She’d have been incinerated, and giving up his dream was nothing compared to the agony of the thought of giving her up. Sickness in his belly and his heart and his heart, and lying awake night after night thinking about what he’d have to do if she was gone. He’d done it before, lying there staring at the ceiling and thinking about her in the Inn, with that shitty little intern, the one from Costa that had been up her arse the entire time he was here. He’d made himself sick thinking about what she might be thinking, what she might be _doing_ , thanks to that flattery, to that interest in her. Cid had never clung so close to her, never taken such an interest in the little bits of her life.

He could have lost her to that brat. She could have fallen in love with him and his charming Costa ways, and they could have run away. She could have abandoned the project. He’s arrogant enough to think she wouldn’t want to disappoint him, but love made women fucking nuts.

But he was just as nuts for lying there feeling sick for the thought of her kissing someone else.

Like most things, he put those thoughts in a tightly-shut box and shoved them in a corner where he didn’t have to think about them again. But he’d thought them, and lying here now, staring at the ceiling and hoping she _did_ go, that she left, because she wasn’t fucking wanted here – a lie, a stinking, brazen lie, he’d die without her – times like these brought all those thoughts back.

Fuck sake.

The sun shifts a little more, and the shadow falls away from the window, and the door knocks. He ignores it, stays curled up in his bed like it’s a safe haven. He’s never been comfortable in a bed in his adult life, and he’s not about to start, except out of spite.

‘Captain?’ comes a familiar call from outside. ‘I know you’re in there! There’s a letter for you!’

He ignores it. It’ll only be some bullshit little secretary’s letter, telling him that they’d pulled funding. He’d rather not read that now.

A few minutes go by, and then there’s an odd shuffling noise, and everything goes still. Without going to see, he knows she’s shoved the letter under the door, and it’s got stuck halfway.

He rolls over, and stares at the sky, the vast blueness from edge to edge of the frame. He should have been up there. He should have been coming down to land in that sky. He should have had so many things, and thanks to Shera, he can’t have a single fucking part of it.

Fuck sake.


	7. 43. Dying

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shera contemplates her mortality.

Shera is not afraid of dying. She’s never really been afraid of dying. At fifteen, she learnt of a sister she never knew she had, who’d died when she was six, and who’s body had never been recovered, or sent home, or seen. She still, a decade later, doesn’t know what happened to it, whether there _was_ a body, or if she was just spirited away in that way ShinRa has with the people it doesn’t like.

Maybe she’s still alive, maybe she ran away and went somewhere nobody could find her.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, because the end result is the same; Shera is not afraid of death.

People die at her dad’s clinic, and animals die in the woods around their home, and people die on the news. She was a teenager, staying up late and staring blindly at blueprints as the news in the background regurgitated statistic after statistic after statistic, reading out the latest death tolls of the war, all the men and women and children that had died that day, week, month. It’s endless, and it goes on and on and on, and Shera mindlessly writes the numbers down instead of her calculations and it’s only in the morning when she looks at it in the cold light of day that the enormity of it hits her. The reality. The coldness of how big the numbers are.

And she’d played a part in it, a large part if you believed the propaganda. It wasn’t even her specialism, in the end, but she’d redesigned the aircraft, and she’d thrown the golden boy himself into the skies, and she’d been ultimately responsible for the amount of damage he and his crew of flyboys were able to do. It was her creation.

Okay, sure, once she’d designed the aircraft, someone else had put the guns in, but it didn’t change that it was her ship, her design, her engineering.

If she was one to swear, she’d swear up a storm of disbelief at her own ignorance.

So death has been a big part of her life, from her childhood, to her teens, to her adulthood, where her mortality stares her in the face, and one morning she wakes up acutely aware that she’s now older than her sister.

Reine asks her if she’s okay when she goes down to breakfast in the morning.

‘Yeah,’ Shera sighs, sitting at the table as Reine potters about with the kettle and a bag of oats, ‘yeah, I think so. I didn’t sleep too well.’

Reine rests a hand on the girl’s head for a moment, and then chucks her chin and goes to make her a cup of tea. Shera stays sat at the table, fiddling with her fingers and staring at the wall, and flinches when Reine places the mug down in front of her.

She’s still all out of sorts when the Captain comes banging in, door swinging on its hinges and his presence too loud in the still quietness of her contemplation. Reine manages to catch him before his baritone breaks the last vestiges of her composure, and drags him aside. Shera cannot hear what they say, but their whispers are harried, confused, concerned.

‘The fuck does that mean?’ the Captain bursts out, and she can imagine him shaking his head.

His boots thud, thud, thud on the floorboards, and the chair creaks when he throws himself into it.

‘Here, four-eyes,’ he says, and shoves a blueprint at her. ‘Take a look at this, I made some improvements.’

She looks at it, and frowns over the calculations, pulling a pen from her ponytail, where pens just seem to migrate, and picks apart his sums. Reine sets a bowl of oats down in front of them both, and Shera half-heartedly spoons it into her mouth as she scribbles with the other hand.

‘I didn’t think they were that off,’ the Captain says, and Shera shrugs one shoulder.

‘Just checking,’ she replies, and when she’s done, she shoves them back across the table.

One side of the blueprint has shifted little more than a millimetre. It will make all the difference. The Captain examines her version of the sums as he eats his bowl of oats, and hums around a mouthful.

‘Thanks,’ he says, ‘didn’t carry the one.’

She offers him a smile, bleak and without humour, and he frowns at her.

‘What’s eating you?’ he asks, ‘pretty sure you’re meant to eat your breakfast, not the other way around.’

It doesn’t get the reaction he was obviously hoping for. She shrugs. He frowns some more, looks back at his bowl.

‘Listen,’ he says, ‘if you want to go home.’

‘No,’ she interrupts. ‘No, it’s fine. I don’t need to go home. I just. I slept badly.’

He studies her face, and she’d blush, on any other day. He never really looks at her, and on any other day, she’d be fighting the urge to fuss with her hair, her glasses, try to make herself pretty under his scrutiny, to pass some kind of test she can’t identify. She wants to be pretty for him, to get his attention, to be viable. But today is not that day, and she doesn’t care. She’s older than her sister, and no matter what, said sister will never be able to meet any partner she has, anyone she might bring home, or to her house, or whatever. She’ll never be able to get her sister’s opinion. So it doesn’t matter.

The Captain leaves her to it after he’s finished his breakfast, unable to work out what it is that’s wrong, and thereby, how to ignore it until it goes away. Shera herself cannot really tell him what’s wrong, because how do you put the nihilistic realisation that you don’t care for your own mortality into words he’d understand?

Reine tiptoes around her for the rest of the morning, so Shera abandons her tea – which will only cause more concern – and goes to get herself ready for the day.

In a few days, the awareness of her mortality will pass, at least the sharpness of it will dull, and she’ll be herself again. But for now, she wallows in it, she revels in the emptiness it leaves her with, and that is too positive a spin, but she’s trying her hardest. She knows she’s wallowing, but she finds it hard to care, and harder still to change the pattern. The Captain, to his credit, does not pussyfoot about; he’s as loud and as brash as ever, insulting her work and calling her names, and she appreciates that he doesn’t know how to change to make her better, so he just sticks with what he knows and hopes it’s enough.

She’ll die for him, this she knows in that moment, as he looks at her over dinner and judges a poorly timed joke before making it anyway. She’ll die for him, because he has a dream, he has something that he’s found to make him feel alive, and he’s holding on with both hands, and he’s not going to let go of that, and Shera envies it. She envies it, and she knows that he’ll probably die in pursuit of it. If he doesn’t, she will. She’s fine with that. It’s just the way these things are, and she’s okay with it. 

Shera is not afraid of dying, and when she wakes up on the morning of April the twelfth, she knows that she’s looking at it.


	8. 21. Vacation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cid and Shera get away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Scarfloor, my worst enabler

A few months of bliss roll past in the aftermath of Meteorfall. Which is a horrible thing to say, considering what said almost-world-destruction cost them, but Cid has the positives to consider, and chooses to consider them. He’s in love, and his love is returned, and he thinks, as he watches Shera potter about in his t-shirt and her underwear with her hair knotted into a bun atop her head, that he’ll make good on that marriage proposal.

‘Let’s get away for a few days,’ he says, and she glances back at him, spoon halfway to her mouth.

She hums, and taps the steel against her chin for a moment. ‘Get away? Where would we go?’

He hadn’t thought that far ahead admittedly, but then she stretches to get something out of the cupboard and any thoughts he’d had up to that point fly out of his head.

When he’s able to get some thoughts in coherent sentences back into his head, he watches her brushing her teeth as he perches on the edge of the tub, his toothbrush loose in his fingers. She’s examining her hairline as she brushes, on her toes to press her nose to the mirror above the sink, and he’s very lucky to have her in his life. She’s no more grown up than she was when she arrived, barley a day over adulthood, and full of the quirks of a girl that grew up mostly alone.

‘You were talking about getting away,’ she offers around a mouthful of fluoride.

‘Yeah,’ he says, and finally gets to his feet to take over the space she vacates. ‘Yeah, I thought. Maybe we could take the _Bronco_ , fly out to Costa? Take a few days in that swanky hotel of theirs, catch some sun, swim a bit.’

Get married, maybe.

‘I didn’t take you for the tourist trap kind of holiday-maker,’ she teases, bumping his hip to spit and rinse.

‘I’m not,’ he tells the back of her head, ‘but I ain’t gonna go to the fuckin’ Saucer for another year.’

He’d pondered taking her there for her birthday, of course, but fuck that. Twice is enough for him. Fucking chocobo racing, who’s idea was that? Cloud’s, obviously. And Yuffie had gone with it, and he’d had better things to do with his time than race jumped up little bastards, but he’d done it anyway. Fucking whatever. It’s not the point.

‘I just think it’d be nice,’ he shrugs. ‘We don’t gotta go.’

‘No, no,’ she smiles, all minty and fresh, and kisses his nose, careful to avoid the froth of his mouth. ‘I like the idea. When do we go?’

‘As soon as you’re packed,’ he shrugs.

And so it’s a half hour later that he’s helping her up into the backseat of the _Bronco_ , their packed bag – one between them, because they know how to pack light, and Costa has a solid enough retail industry that they can pick anything they need up there – safely behind her feet, and they’re heading out on their way.

It’s been a long while since they’d taken the _Bronco_ out, and Cid’s missed having her in the backseat, yelling over the wind and utterly unintelligible. He glances over his shoulder at her, helmet and goggles, and she’s adorable, and he’s so fucking in love with her.

‘I love you,’ he shouts, but it’s swallowed by the clouds around them.

Touching down in Costa, he’s not surprised that it’s busy. Meteor is quickly becoming a distant memory for everyone not in the Midgar area, and he wonders how long before people just forget how close they’d come.

‘Wow,’ Shera says, as he helps her down out of the _Bronco_ , ‘swimsuits have gotten a lot smaller since I last wore one.’

‘If you want to call the thing you wore a swimsuit,’ he snorts, and hikes himself up to reach the bag, yanking it free. ‘It had sleeves and was longer than your shorts.’

Shera huffs out a big breath, lips pursed, but there’s laughter in the creases of her eyes.

‘It was _not_ ,’ she protests, ‘just because I wasn’t flashing my – ‘ Here, she casts a glance about herself, looking at the people on the beach, pottering about on the dock, ‘ – flashing my tits,’ she finishes in a whisper.

Cid laughs at that, and bends to kiss her.

‘You’d have to be naked to flash ‘em,’ he teases, and she gives him an affronted yelp and a soft slap to the arm for his trouble.

‘Ha! And to think I bought a new one, just for you.’

He’s just about to walk away, but he glances back at her, eyebrow raised. She eyes him back, and he grins, hikes the bag onto his shoulder so he has a free hand to take hers with.

‘Fuckin’ adorable, you are,’ he tells her, and she wrinkles her nose with her smile.

* * *

The hotel has air-con and it’s priced over the odds, and Shera baulks at the receipt, but Cid shrugs it off, and leads her upstairs. The view is incredible, almost entirely the blue of the sea, and she makes some soft comment or another about how different it’s going to be, waking up to the sound of the waves.

‘Even at home,’ she says, and he comes to stand behind her, fingers working under the edge of her vest to rest warm and gentle against her hips, her belly, under the waistband of her shorts, ‘we couldn’t hear the water from our house.’

‘Have you been home?’ he asks her, presses a kiss to her neck.

She shakes her head, relaxes into him. ‘No, I keep meaning to write them a letter, but I never seem to get there.’

It’s Shera’s way, the meaning to do things but never quite getting there. She’s forgetful about the strangest of things, and remembers even stranger things than the things she forgets. There’s no real rhyme or reason to it, and not remembering to write to her parents is about right for her. He loves her so fucking much.

‘Do it later,’ he says, ‘I have an errand I need to run, so you’ll have time, then we can post it on our way to dinner.’

She turns her head, gets distracted by how close he is, and she’s fascinated by his eyes for several long moments, and fascinated by his mouth against hers for a few more still.

‘An errand?’ she asks, when he lets her go some half an hour later, to dress and fuss with her hair.

‘Mm,’ he nods, ‘it’s not that important, I just want to check on something I saw when I was here last time, with the kids.’

The kids. She thinks it’s hilarious that he refers to AVALANCHE as “the kids.” They aren’t kids any more than they are, but they’re so young. They’ve all been by once or twice, and Shera had never really felt old, or grown-up, or like an adult, until she’d met them. Then planet below she realised she was about to hit thirty and it just – it was a very strange feeling, and not one she’s keen to relive.

She pulls on her swimsuit, a red thing that fits her very nicely and is just as revealing as the other one had been, thank you very much, with its thin shoulder straps and high leg line, and a loose shirt to protect her shoulders. He eyeballs her, top to toe, and then grins, rakes his hands through his hair.

‘You’re beautiful, you know that?’

She laughs, and tosses a t-shirt at him.

‘Take me to the beach, Captain,’ she says.

* * *

He leaves her to return to the hotel a few hours later, sand between her toes and in her hair, and her sunglasses sticky with sun lotion. He refuses to tell her, no matter how she needles, where he’s got to go, and she gives up very quickly, which is more fool her than him, but he kisses her nose and pats her arse, and tells her he won’t be long. She tries to watch where he goes, but he disappears between buildings and she can’t see through them, so she has nothing to do except go to the hotel and wash and change and write to her parents, as he’d suggested she do.

She’s still chewing on her pen when he returns, her hair towel-dried and curling around her neck, in his t-shirt and her underwear, and he stops at the doorway to watch her. She’s so caught up in trying to find the words she wants that he doesn’t want to disturb her, but he’s booked them dinner, and she needs to get ready. They didn’t bring anything nice to wear, but that doesn’t matter, he doesn’t think. She’s stunning in everything she wears.

Finally she groans and tosses the pen down, and he takes it as his cue to enter properly.

‘You looked like you were having fun,’ he says, and she grunts, rolls her eyes.

‘I never know what to say to them,’ she says, ‘it used to be so easy, but since I – since the – since the last time I saw them, I never really know what to say.’

‘You should have taken the _Bronco_ ,’ he shrugs, ‘and gone to see them.’

She shakes her head.

‘I don’t know how to fly it,’ she admits, and this surprises him; he’d always thought she’d known, considering she’d designed them at fifteen.

But then, he supposes with a shrug as he runs a hand along her head, smoothing her hair as he passes, that didn’t mean she flew them at all.

‘We’re going out for dinner,’ he tells her, and she looks at him, shocked. ‘I did tell you we would be.’

‘But so soon?’ she asks, and touches her hair. She’s never cared about her hair before, but then, he supposes he’s never really taken her out for dinner before.

‘No rush,’ he tells her, ‘you’ve got time to dry your hair.’

‘Is there a dress code?’

He flops back onto the bed, but raises up enough to give her an eyeball. Does she really think he’s going anywhere he needs to wear a suit? The last time he wore a suit, he nearly punched his boss and she lost an expensive pair of shoes. He’s not keen to repeat the experience, even if he doesn’t have a boss to punch. She watches him, waits for him to crack, but he just offers her half a smile and flops back onto the pillows, arm flung over his eyes.

‘You got time,’ he tells her again, ‘no rush.’

She goes into the en-suite and dries her hair nicely, examines her face in the mirror, thinks that her eyebrows will probably do for a few days, and when she emerges from the bathroom, it’s to find the Captain dozing. She’s grown very familiar with the differences in his dozing and his sleeping and his fully-awakes. For a moment, she lingers on the threshold and watches him, the rise and fall of his chest, the soft bob of his knee as he breathes, the plane of his arm, the bunch of muscle. He’s incredible, in ways she’d never thought a man could be.

Quietly, she goes and settles next to him, hands beneath her head, watching him dozing.

* * *

She wakes up to his lips on her shoulder. The sun’s moved, her skin’s warm, and Cid’s fingers are brushing up and down her arm gently.

‘We need to get ready,’ he hums, and his eyes are so very, very blue.

‘Yeah,’ she breathes, and gives a full body stretch and a yawn. ‘Yeah, okay.’

She dresses in her shorts and T-shirt, which is not very nice for dinner, but Cid’s not much better in cargo shorts and a vest that clings entirely too tightly to his shoulders.

‘I didn’t know you owned that,’ she says, gesturing, and he plucks at it.

‘Usually only wear it in winter,’ he says, ‘under my T-shirts, extra layer and that.’

She can feel the heat in her cheeks when she says, ‘it suits you.’

He snorts, and ushers her out.

Dinner is at one of the street-side restaurants on the promenade, quiet even with the people strolling past, taking in the last of the rays on the beach before the tide rolls in. There’s hustle and bustle at the dock, but Cid doesn’t look at it the way she’d expected him to; he’s firmly focused on the menu.

They order, and Cid gets antsy.

‘Are you alright?’ she asks, ‘did I order the wrong thing? I’m – ‘

‘Don’t even fucking say it,’ he tells her, hand cutting the words out of the air before they can leave her mouth. ‘It’s not that, I just – listen, right, listen, I got something I need to say, before you try and eat that fucking pasta and choke to death.’

Her eyebrows climb and she huffs out a breath that could be a laugh, but the desperate look in his eyes tells her it’s not a laughing matter.

‘Okay,’ she says, and reaches across the table to take his hands, but he yanks them back. ‘What is it?’

‘You know that I love you,’ he tells her, plaintive, desperate. ‘You know that, and I want to – I want – you know that I don’t want to lose you.’

‘Yes,’ she says, slowly, and feels her eyebrows draw together.

‘Well, I was thinking that night, after – after Aerith – when we got to Icicle Inn, afterward, everyone was tired. We were so tired, and I was sat there by the fire with Tifa, and Barret was asleep next to her, and she looked so sad, and I told her.’

‘You told her?’

‘That I want to marry you.’

It takes her a moment. At first, she’s not sure she heard him correctly. She almost asks him to repeat it, but the look on his face tells her that she heard him right the first time.

‘Marry?’ she echoes, stupidly.

‘Yes.’

He fusses for a moment, and then jerks to his feet, a box in his hand.

‘I saw this when we were in Costa,’ he says, and shoves it at her. ‘It said it wasn’t perfect, that the apprentice made it, and it wasn’t even really going to be for sale. And I said to myself, that if we survived, and things turned out – you know – okay, between us. That I’d come back and buy it, because it’s not perfect, but it _is_. If it hadn’t said it, I’d never have known, but I think it really – I hope it fits.’

Shera blinks at him, and then looks at the box he’s still shoving at her.

Tentatively, she takes it, and he touches his hands together for a moment, as if about to wring them, and then shoves them in his pockets. She glances at him, at the box, back at him, back at the box.

Opens it.

‘Cid,’ she says, breathes.

It’s not a fancy ring, but it was never going to be a fancy ring. It’s a little band of gold, and she supposes it was meant to be a string of flowers, but they’re crooked and misshapen and it looks, with the pinpricks of diamonds in the centre, like stars. Like a constellation. For a moment, she stares at it, and then she sees him shuffling in her periphery and she raises her gaze, finds it blurry.

‘Cid,’ she says again, and he touches her hands, drops to both knees, the heathen, tries to read her face, but it’s splotchy and teary and her lip’s wobbling.

‘Is that a yes?’ he asks, and she’s so off-guard, she doesn’t know what to do.

‘I think so!’ she squeaks, and he laughs, because of course she thinks so.


End file.
